Museum housing Henry VIII's flagship up for British award

[April 25, 2014]  LONDON (Reuters) — A museum in the British city of Portsmouth that displays the salvaged hulk of King Henry VIII's flagship "Mary Rose", which sank in an attack on a French invasion fleet in 1545, is among the six finalists named on Thursday for a 100,000-pound ($167,800) prize.

The Mary Rose Museum made the shortlist for Museum of the Year, the Art Fund charity said, for its "extraordinary and elegant" exhibition of the ship, which was rediscovered in 1971 and salvaged in one of the costliest such operations in history.

Other finalists for the award, whose winner will be announced in July, are the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in the English county of East Sussex, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, Tate Britain in London and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Norwich.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, and chairman of the judges, said in a statement that given the quality of the competition for the prize, it is "no wonder that the international reputation of UK museums is riding so high".

The Art Fund is a British fundraising charity for art.

($1 = 0.5960 British pounds)

(Reporting by Michael Roddy; editing by Angus MacSwan)

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